¿Podemos integrar la asistencia nutricional en los distintos niveles asistenciales? La experiencia catalana. Visión del clínico

Disease-related malnutrition is highly prevalent in pathologies commonly integrating care complexity. Healthcare models for complexity must include malnutrition detection and approaches, since it is a key factor which has great impact on the patient’s evolution and the consumption of healthcare resources. Malnourished patients present higher hospitalization, complication and mortality rates, higher demand of post-discharge social resources and higher hospital readmission frequency. Detecting malnutrition is necessary to implement a nutritional care program which might be used in any assistance level. The integration of health and social care and the development of information tools which are shared by the different assistance agents has allowed the development of a program for the management of disease-related malnutrition in patients with clinical complexity in Catalonia.